"At Monte Lupo,çoisRené Count Potoçki[551] buried himself in charming _laurœ_; but did not the thoughts of Rome follow him there? Did he not believe himself transported there amid 'choirs of young girls?' And I too, like St. Jerome[552], 'have in my time spent day and night in uttering cries, in beating my breast, until God gave me back my peace.' _Plango me non esse quod fuerim._
"After passing the hermitage of Monte Lupo, we began to wind round the Somma. I had already taken that road on my first journey from Florence to Rome over Perugia, when accompanying a dying woman....
"By the nature of the light and a sort of vivacity of the landscape, I should have believed myself on one of the ridges of the Alleghany Mountains, were it not that a tall aqueduct, surmounted by a narrow bridge[553], recalled to me a Roman work to which the Lombard Dukes of Spoleto had put their hands: the Americans have not yet come to those monuments which follow upon liberty. I climbed the Somma on foot, walking beside Clitumnian oxen which dragged Her Excellency the Ambassadress to her triumph. A young goat-girl, as thin, light of foot and pretty as her kid, followed me with her little brother in that opulent country-side, asking me for _carità_: I gave it her in memory of Madame de Beaumont, whom these spots have forgotten.
Alas, regardless of their doom, The little victims play! No sense have they of ills to come, Nor care beyond to-day[554].
"I saw Terni again and its cascades. A champaign planted with olive-trees brought me to Narni; then, after passing through Otricoli, we arrived and stopped at sad Civita Castellana. I should much like to go to Santa Maria di Faleri to see a city of which nothing is left but its skin, the walls; inside, it was empty: _misère humaine à Dieu ramène._[555] Let us wait till my grandeurs are past, and I shall return to seek out the city of the Faliscans. Soon, from Nero's Tomb, I shall be showing my wife the cross of St. Peter's which commands the city of the Cæsars."
You have glanced through my diary of the road, you shall now read my letters to Madame Récamier, interspersed, as I announced, with pages of history. Alongside of these, you will find my dispatches. Here will appear distinctly the two men that exist in me.